Zoney wrote:
Does it not drive anyone else up the wall the
incessant templates jammed
onto the top of our articles? Sure some of the articles have issues that
readers as well as editors should be aware of, but it's really ridiculous
having these Vogonic bureaucratic Wiki-speak instructions/jargon stamped
before the article text for all and sundry to enjoy. Half the time the
templates aren't even warranted, or at the least the issue is not important
enough to demand anything other than a note on the talk page. It's far too
easy for people just to slap on templates onto articles in a sort of
wiki-process-allowed defacement of content.
I admit that with so many templates at the top of pages, I have learned
to ignore them as so much meaningless noise and chatter. Fixing the
article is often an unrealistic option, especially if I have just gone
to the article to inform myself about something that I knew nothing
about; in all likelihood I don't have any reference material on the
subject anyway. Another option may be to simply remove the template and
risk an argument with some nitwit who has taken ownership of the
template by putting it on his watchlist. Such an argument will likely
be unproductive, and a complete waste of my own time.
So even though I know that they are not good for the 'pedia, I choose to
ignore them since that is the path of least resistance.
I mean the trivia section warning for one thing. I
consider myself firmly in
the anti-trivia camp, and indeed I'd nearly support removing offending
sections to talk pages as well when asking people to integrate the brainless
factoids; but really, there's no need to give instructions on the situation
to all our readers. It's just not that important! Templates in fact compound
the problem by highlighting the trivia sections! It makes no sense!
We probably
differ on whether trivia should be there in the first place,
but that would be a different issue. I also don't see how jamming this
stuff into other parts of the article is advantageous. Sometimes that
just gives these factoids more importance than they deserve for the sole
benefit of getting rid of the "Trivia" heading. I agree with you to the
extent that if the heading already exists the template is redundant. One
might even say that the templates are themselves just another form of
trivia.
Ec